The Normal Heart (HBO Movie)

[CBStew]

I don't know what the title of the play/tvmovie stands for.  But I do know that it was a very depressing story.  It is about the Aids epidemic before we even had heard the word "Aids".   We called it the gay flu.  Except that when you got flu you were over after a week or two, but no one we knew ever got over the "gay flu".  It was so frightening for everyone that we were afraid to eat in  restaurants in the Castro District.  Some of my law partners would not use the men's toilet in our office because we had a gay male legal secretary.    It wasn't so long ago that players in NBA games had to come out of the game if they got a cut until it stopped bleeding.  After all, Magic Johnson...  Here in the Bay Area, in New York and Chicago the list of the dead kept growing.  It killed closeted men whom we didn't even know were gay.  It killed the teenaged sons of our friends.  This movie is overwhelming in its sense of foreboding.    If the straights were panicked we could only guess about how gay men felt.  The acting in this movie serves this serious story well.  Mark Ruffalo is the brash and unlikeable protagonist and Matt Bomer of "White Collar" is outstanding as his doomed lover. The graphic script at the end of the movie tells us that the epidemic is not over, and that today 6000 people a day are infected by the virus. 

[InternetApex]

I don't know what the title of the play/tvmovie stands for.  But I do know that it was a very depressing story.  It is about the Aids epidemic before we even had heard the word "Aids".   We called it the gay flu.  Except that when you got flu you were over after a week or two, but no one we knew ever got over the "gay flu".  It was so frightening for everyone that we were afraid to eat in  restaurants in the Castro District.  Some of my law partners would not use the men's toilet in our office because we had a gay male legal secretary.    It wasn't so long ago that players in NBA games had to come out of the game if they got a cut until it stopped bleeding.  After all, Magic Johnson...  Here in the Bay Area, in New York and Chicago the list of the dead kept growing.  It killed closeted men whom we didn't even know were gay.  It killed the teenaged sons of our friends.  This movie is overwhelming in its sense of foreboding.    If the straights were panicked we could only guess about how gay men felt.  The acting in this movie serves this serious story well.  Mark Ruffalo is the brash and unlikeable protagonist and Matt Bomer of "White Collar" is outstanding as his doomed lover. The graphic script at the end of the movie tells us that the epidemic is not over, and that today 6000 people a day are infected by the virus.  

I took the title to mean that the men in the community were struggling to prove they were normal under even greater odds than ever before. Ned's struggle to gain that affirmation from his brother was on the periphery of the story but was symbolic of everything these men needed. It is interesting that this movie shows no sex but rather some extremely intimate and terrifying moments - for anyone regardless of your orientation. The fact that in Africa and other places today times are even harder than those shown here is heartbreaking and though it seems trite to suggest it, sickening for me. If that were happening anyplace in the world that white people inhabit, we as a society would not stand for it and act at once. But we'd rather spend trillions of dollars trying to stabalize regions where "radical Islam" is a real and imminent threat.

Can't help thinking it: We're all fucking doomed.  

[CBStew]

I don't know what the title of the play/tvmovie stands for.  But I do know that it was a very depressing story.  It is about the Aids epidemic before we even had heard the word "Aids".   We called it the gay flu.  Except that when you got flu you were over after a week or two, but no one we knew ever got over the "gay flu".  It was so frightening for everyone that we were afraid to eat in  restaurants in the Castro District.  Some of my law partners would not use the men's toilet in our office because we had a gay male legal secretary.    It wasn't so long ago that players in NBA games had to come out of the game if they got a cut until it stopped bleeding.  After all, Magic Johnson...  Here in the Bay Area, in New York and Chicago the list of the dead kept growing.  It killed closeted men whom we didn't even know were gay.  It killed the teenaged sons of our friends.  This movie is overwhelming in its sense of foreboding.    If the straights were panicked we could only guess about how gay men felt.  The acting in this movie serves this serious story well.  Mark Ruffalo is the brash and unlikeable protagonist and Matt Bomer of "White Collar" is outstanding as his doomed lover. The graphic script at the end of the movie tells us that the epidemic is not over, and that today 6000 people a day are infected by the virus.  

I took the title to mean that the men in the community were struggling to prove they were normal under even greater odds than ever before. Ned's struggle to gain that affirmation from his brother was on the periphery of the story but was symbolic of everything these men needed. It is interesting that this movie shows no sex but rather some extremely intimate and terrifying moments - for anyone regardless of your orientation. The fact that in Africa and other places today times are even harder than those shown here is heartbreaking and though it seems trite to suggest it, sickening for me. If that were happening anyplace in the world that white people inhabit, we as a society would not stand for it and act at once. But we'd rather spend trillions of dollars trying to stabalize regions where "radical Islam" is a real and imminent threat.

Can't help thinking it: We're all fucking doomed.  

For years under the Reagan administration the Federal government declined to acknowledge that a problem existed.  It was more than ironic given that the Hollywood community was so afflicted.

[InternetApex]

I don't know what the title of the play/tvmovie stands for.  But I do know that it was a very depressing story.  It is about the Aids epidemic before we even had heard the word "Aids".   We called it the gay flu.  Except that when you got flu you were over after a week or two, but no one we knew ever got over the "gay flu".  It was so frightening for everyone that we were afraid to eat in  restaurants in the Castro District.  Some of my law partners would not use the men's toilet in our office because we had a gay male legal secretary.    It wasn't so long ago that players in NBA games had to come out of the game if they got a cut until it stopped bleeding.  After all, Magic Johnson...  Here in the Bay Area, in New York and Chicago the list of the dead kept growing.  It killed closeted men whom we didn't even know were gay.  It killed the teenaged sons of our friends.  This movie is overwhelming in its sense of foreboding.    If the straights were panicked we could only guess about how gay men felt.  The acting in this movie serves this serious story well.  Mark Ruffalo is the brash and unlikeable protagonist and Matt Bomer of "White Collar" is outstanding as his doomed lover. The graphic script at the end of the movie tells us that the epidemic is not over, and that today 6000 people a day are infected by the virus.  

I took the title to mean that the men in the community were struggling to prove they were normal under even greater odds than ever before. Ned's struggle to gain that affirmation from his brother was on the periphery of the story but was symbolic of everything these men needed. It is interesting that this movie shows no sex but rather some extremely intimate and terrifying moments - for anyone regardless of your orientation. The fact that in Africa and other places today times are even harder than those shown here is heartbreaking and though it seems trite to suggest it, sickening for me. If that were happening anyplace in the world that white people inhabit, we as a society would not stand for it and act at once. But we'd rather spend trillions of dollars trying to stabalize regions where "radical Islam" is a real and imminent threat.

Can't help thinking it: We're all fucking doomed.  

For years under the Reagan administration the Federal government declined to acknowledge that a problem existed.  It was more than ironic given that the Hollywood community was so afflicted.

I remember Ryan White, an Indiana schoolboy about my age who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion and soon after died of AIDS. It was a huge deal for us, bigger than the Challenger explosion, which was the other major story on our radar during that time. We learned that this wasn't a "gay disease" and we were all at risk - well some of us did anyway. We soon heard of heterosexual men and women contracting the disease and that was years before Magic Johnson and Eazy-E. So as a kid, learning about this disease in when I did, I don't think I had that uninformed gay fear stigma. It was just "don't get a blood transfusion and you're probably all good." For adults, the fear had to be so much more real. The behavior of the presidential adviser asking frantic, hurried and obnoxious questions seemed so foreign to me when I saw it in the film. But I realize that character was almost certainly a depiction of real attitudes both in society at large and on the very highest levels of our government. And I'd very much like to comfort myself and say, thank god the world isn't like that anymore. But it is. And in many ways it's worse because we have so much more access to information and misinformation that people conveniently ignore or choose to bend and twist to their own narrative.

I hate this movie because of what it says about us all. That's why it's so brilliant.

[Bort]

Man, nobody tell my wife this exists.  And the Band Played On was depressing enough. I can't sit through another of these, and she eats this depressio stuff up.

[CBStew]

I don't know what the title of the play/tvmovie stands for.  But I do know that it was a very depressing story.  It is about the Aids epidemic before we even had heard the word "Aids".   We called it the gay flu.  Except that when you got flu you were over after a week or two, but no one we knew ever got over the "gay flu".  It was so frightening for everyone that we were afraid to eat in  restaurants in the Castro District.  Some of my law partners would not use the men's toilet in our office because we had a gay male legal secretary.    It wasn't so long ago that players in NBA games had to come out of the game if they got a cut until it stopped bleeding.  After all, Magic Johnson...  Here in the Bay Area, in New York and Chicago the list of the dead kept growing.  It killed closeted men whom we didn't even know were gay.  It killed the teenaged sons of our friends.  This movie is overwhelming in its sense of foreboding.    If the straights were panicked we could only guess about how gay men felt.  The acting in this movie serves this serious story well.  Mark Ruffalo is the brash and unlikeable protagonist and Matt Bomer of "White Collar" is outstanding as his doomed lover. The graphic script at the end of the movie tells us that the epidemic is not over, and that today 6000 people a day are infected by the virus.  

I took the title to mean that the men in the community were struggling to prove they were normal under even greater odds than ever before. Ned's struggle to gain that affirmation from his brother was on the periphery of the story but was symbolic of everything these men needed. It is interesting that this movie shows no sex but rather some extremely intimate and terrifying moments - for anyone regardless of your orientation. The fact that in Africa and other places today times are even harder than those shown here is heartbreaking and though it seems trite to suggest it, sickening for me. If that were happening anyplace in the world that white people inhabit, we as a society would not stand for it and act at once. But we'd rather spend trillions of dollars trying to stabalize regions where "radical Islam" is a real and imminent threat.

Can't help thinking it: We're all fucking doomed.  

For years under the Reagan administration the Federal government declined to acknowledge that a problem existed.  It was more than ironic given that the Hollywood community was so afflicted.

I remember Ryan White, an Indiana schoolboy about my age who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion and soon after died of AIDS. It was a huge deal for us, bigger than the Challenger explosion, which was the other major story on our radar during that time. We learned that this wasn't a "gay disease" and we were all at risk - well some of us did anyway. We soon heard of heterosexual men and women contracting the disease and that was years before Magic Johnson and Eazy-E. So as a kid, learning about this disease in when I did, I don't think I had that uninformed gay fear stigma. It was just "don't get a blood transfusion and you're probably all good." For adults, the fear had to be so much more real. The behavior of the presidential adviser asking frantic, hurried and obnoxious questions seemed so foreign to me when I saw it in the film. But I realize that character was almost certainly a depiction of real attitudes both in society at large and on the very highest levels of our government. And I'd very much like to comfort myself and say, thank god the world isn't like that anymore. But it is. And in many ways it's worse because we have so much more access to information and misinformation that people conveniently ignore or choose to bend and twist to their own narrative.

I hate this movie because of what it says about us all. That's why it's so brilliant.

The comment about the fact that the government spent more money on the issue of Tylenol bottles that had been tampered with than on the Aids epidemic was a jaw dropper.   The Jim Parsons' character's comment acknowledging that this indifference was because "They just don't like us." is hard to argue with.

[Quality Start Machine]

Man, nobody tell my wife this exists.  And the Band Played On was depressing enough. I can't sit through another of these, and she eats this depressio stuff up.

The only Goth site you'll ever need.

[Bort]

Man, nobody tell my wife this exists.  And the Band Played On was depressing enough. I can't sit through another of these, and she eats this depressio stuff up.

The only Goth site you'll ever need.

I admit it...I laughed.


(It's an oblique Strongbad reference, for those playing along at home.